CD review of "Into the Wild" soundtrack

When Eddie Vedder's voice first cuts through the sounds of Sean Penn's based-on-a-true-story film "Into the Wild," you realize it's been a good while since Vedder has been this passionate about anything.

And while his pained vocals sometimes are an ill fit, he's mixed it with traces of Americana that line up with his muse, a 24-year-old idealist named Chris McCandless who freewheeled the nation in search of truth until he was found dead, apparently of starvation, on a bus in the Alaskan wilderness in August 1992.

Vedder embraces the rare parts of the film where Penn crosses the line of obviousness - screenwriting slips such as, "If you want something in life, reach out and grab it" match up with songs abhorring "Society," as McCandless breaks from it.

Still, the original songs give the movie a feeling of being as unique as its subject, and the effort is as sincere as Penn's filmmaking or McCandless's need to get rid of the stuff and things that bogged him down.